So many of the social media gaffes that left prominent sports figures permanently exposed have gone viral in recent years. The next generation has been clicking on those awkward moments, leading experts to believe that student-athletes coming of age right now are less likely to repeat sins of the past.

Not out in the open, anyway.

“Some of the problems are still there,” said Bryce Ford, a three-sport athlete from John Jay-Cross River who’s heading to Fairfield University to play lacrosse. “You don’t see it as much because it’s more private now.”

A survey conducted last spring by Pew Research Center, a non-partisan fact tank, found that 95 percent of teens have access to a smartphone.

Most children born in the last five years have had a social media presence since conception.

“When a mom is posting her sonogram pictures on Instagram, they’re already out there, they’re already online,” said professor Regina Luttrell, the interim director of the Graduate Program in Public Relations at Syracuse University and the author of ‘Social Media: How to Engage, Share and Connect.’

“By the time kids turn 13, 14, 15, they’ve lived an entire life online,” Luttrell added. “This is why they have this fear of living offline. They’ve never not lived online. They’ve never not been connected.”

Kids in general have become smarter and sneakier in how they utilize the most popular social media platforms. But student-athletes appear to be considering the consequences.

Buy Photo

Westlake volleyball player Sydney Roell holds up her phone as she talks about student athletes and social media while in the gym at Westlake High School in Thornwood .(Photo: Frank Becerra Jr./The Journal News)

YouTube, Instagram and Snapchat, respectively, are the most popular apps in use right now, according to the Pew Research Center survey.

Facebook is for old folks.

“It’s always going to be a work in progress, but I do think more kids are monitoring what’s appropriate and what’s not appropriate,” said Yorktown High School Principal Joseph DeGennaro, who ranks among the most prolific local administrators on Twitter. “I also think kids have become more sophisticated. They share a lot now in private groups that we publicly will never see.”

Many student-athletes use Twitter, but only to monitor media coverage.

The disappearing content of Snapchat remains wildly popular and dangerous.

“I don’t think that high school students have the cognitive ability to always understand what they are posting is going to affect their life in the future,” Luttrell added.

The boys soccer team at Blind Brook had a private group on Facebook in 2017 and created a racially insensitive event to promote an upcoming game against Keio Academy. The post labeled the game against the private Japanese school in neighboring “The Varsity Soccer Manhattan Project," a reference to the World War II effort to produce the first atomic bombs that were eventually dropped on Japan.

It became a teaching moment, prompting a pregame meeting between the teams.

The 'horrors' are now in middle school

Nyack High School held a social media workshop last week for nearly 200 athletes playing in the winter season. There will be reminders from teammates and coaches about proper behavior prior to each big game, too.

Education is an important first step in maintaining the positive trend.

“There is no magic recipe,” Indians athletic director Joe Sigillo said. “We think it’s under control, but you can never know for sure.”

Experts warn that vigilance is mandatory and are calling for earlier interventions.

“It’s the middle school level where we’re seeing the horrors now,” said Pat Hale, founder of Social Media Athlete, a New Jersey consulting and marketing company whose Twitter account @HSSocialMedia boasts nearly 86,000 followers. “Five years ago, it was the high schools who had the sexting scandals and kids putting stupid things on social media. That has dwindled. It’s gotten worse in middle school. The biggest scandals in the last year have been with seventh- and eighth-graders.”

Hale pointed to a racially-insensitive and sexually-explicit Snapchat locker room video posted in October 2017 that resulted in a Virginia middle school football team forfeiting the remainder of its season.

“We’re seeing the sexting more in middle school,” Hale added. “The high school kids have learned how to hide it. We’re seeing kids make the mistakes younger.”

Experts agree that Snapchat remains a danger zone, especially for the younger users.

“We thought we could have these private, back-room discussions but in a social space — but again, (that wasn't) really the case because the data could leak out of it and still be captured,” said Jennifer Grygiel, an assistant professor at Syracuse University who is an expert in social and emerging media. “I think it gave people this false sense of security.”

“Really, there’s no privacy in any of these social spaces,” Grygiel added. “I think these products are being designed in a way to give us this false sense of security and trust, and a lot of us will take leaps of faith in that and a lot of people are really disappointed.”

CLOSE

High school athletes and athletic directors talk about using social media in sports
John Meore, jmeore@lohud.com

Late to the game

Ryan Mahoney began to look more seriously at the potential of social media three years ago. The dean of students and baseball coach at Iona Prep was not a fan until he added assistant athletic director to his list of titles.

The school now has 10 different team accounts on Twitter and seven different accounts on Instagram.

“We looked at the schools like Stepinac that were promoting what they were doing and decided we should maybe get into this,” Mahoney said. “I think it’s been great to promote the school and everything we do.”

Buy Photo

Ryan Mahoney (left) coaching during a baseball game at Iona Prep in New Rochelle on April 28, 2015.(Photo: Frank Becerra Jr./The Journal News)

Iona Prep has social media guidelines in the student handbook and counselors touch on the pitfalls in group guidance. It is a common practice in schools throughout the Lower Hudson Valley.

“Our students were out in front on this, way ahead of all of us,” said DeGennaro, who tweets birthday wishes to students at Yorktown High School daily. “There’s not a day that goes by in our high school, and I’m sure in most high schools, that social media doesn’t come in on some level. Obviously, there’s a negative piece to it, but it gives us a chance to talk to kids and speak with parents, and when necessary, certainly, to consequence kids, as well.”

Monitoring social media for potentially sensitive posts is too cumbersome for most educators not up on social media newcomers.

“I think the kids are always one step ahead of us in terms of what app they’re using,” Mahoney said.

Regardless of which social media tool is hot, trends are slow to change.

“With the males, we're still seeing too much sexually-explicit stuff out there that they like or share,” Hale noted. “With the females, we still have too much undisciplined response to social media.”

The upside is too great to ignore at this point, so most high school athletic departments have become active across multiple platforms, engaging fans and updating scores. Some have individual accounts for varsity teams and encourage coaches to log on.

Modeling proper behavior is a priority.

“I think it’s a great way for us to promote our program in a positive way,” Sigillo said. “It lets us get news out there about our kids and all the positive things they’re doing. I’ll put more on Twitter than I put on our web page because I know more people will see it.”

The warning label

Getting student-athletes to understand the permanence of a single post on social media is the best way to avoid controversy and consequences, according to the experts.

It's no easy task given the constant online activity.

“We’ve kind of created an environment and a society that it really only exists if it’s documented on social media,” said Olivia Stomski, who is the director of the Newhouse Sports Media Center at Syracuse University.

That environment is causing people to detach from interpersonal connections, said Grygiel, who has seen their students disconnecting more in class.

“It’s concerning,” Grygiel said. “We’re starting to get to the point where there’s fundamental restructuring of how we interact with each other and I’m not necessarily sure it’s for the better.”

Social media continues to provide outspoken outsiders access to student-athletes.

Ford was subjected to a small degree of unwanted commentary in September when he was named to the preseason lohud Super 11 team, which highlights the top returning players in the Lower Hudson Valley. The senior quarterback at John Jay-Cross River went on to an unprecedented season, finishing with 1,688 passing yards, 2,043 rushing yards and 44 total touchdowns.

“I got some nasty comments (on Twitter) from people who didn’t think I deserved it,” he said. “As the season went on, I got a lot of nice messages from players around Section 1.”

“I get it because I’ve been in situations where I didn’t get some award or lost a big game, but I wouldn’t go out of my way to send a message to someone,” Ford said. “You kind of brush it off. It’s not that big of a deal.”

Nearly 60 percent of the teens who took part in the Pew survey indicated they have experienced some form of cyber bullying.

For the unhappy individuals who like to bait rivals, the weapon of choice provides a measure of anonymity.

“I just watched us lose to Stepinac in football and it got a little edgy on Twitter,” Mahoney said. “And it seemed to be mostly adults misbehaving. When you have a handle with no picture and the only thing you post is negativity, there's a problem. Why would you egg on a 16-year-old who has something to lose?”

Alumni have also been known to lose touch with reality.

“There will be things posted by alumni or fans, people who can say whatever they want because they're not facing any repercussions,” Ford said. “Among the athletes, it's handled the right way, but with fans and alumni it can get out of hand.”

Do you know where your kids are?

Four years ago, Facebook was the favorite platform among teens and Vines were still a thing. Texting was the quickest way to get a message to a group of close friends.

New apps can be enticing, but kids usually hang close to friends.

“Instagram, Snapchat and Twitter are the only three I use,” said Lucas Fecci, a senior at Somers and the lohud Westchester/Putnam boys soccer player of the year. “Most of my friends are on Snapchat and Instagram. I think it’s mostly the athletes who use Twitter, so we can get scores and other information.”

The fact that parents are finding Twitter may not be good for the growth of the platform.

“Snapchat is what I use with my friends,” Mahopac hockey standout Brian O'Shea said. “Twitter is just for keeping up with sports and getting links to what's going on.”

Roell, the Westlake volleyball star, has a number of admirers — 3,622 to be exact, on Instagram.

Her stats are borderline ridiculous. The outside hitter became the first player in program history to amass 1,000 career kills. She is also averaging 1,000 likes per photo on Instagram.

The hard-hitting senior has a dormant “Finsta” account, too.

It's a “Fake Instagram” account with followers carefully selected by the user in order to keep the potential fallout between besties.

“Basically, it’s just an account that you make for your close friends to follow and you post stupid things you wouldn’t want anybody else to see,” Roell said. “I just felt so stupid using it, like, why am I posting these awkward photos of myself trying to be funny? It’s just embarrassing now.”

Despite the improving behavior, there are more social media hazards than ever.

It only takes a moment of indiscretion to inspire a potentially embarrassing post that spreads across multiple platforms. Responding to a comment might inspire a lingering controversy. Sharing an offensive post makes users guilty by association.

There are more and more artificial intelligence programs capable of analyzing social media accounts coming online. Employers are willing to pay for a service that vets potential hires.

Colleges are watching

Colleges are checking profiles less formally, but they are checking.

Binghamton University men’s lacrosse head coach Kevin McKeown and members of his staff track potential recruits and current players via social media.

“We haven't had to disqualify anyone, but there certainly has been some accountability with team members when social media posts cross the line,” said McKeown, a former All-American goalie at Brewster. “Anything that is put on the internet is forever. It is important to represent yourself in a professional manner, as you never know what may come up in recruiting visit or a job interview later in life.”

A student-athlete with aspirations beyond high school needs to be vigilant long before the recruiting process begins.

“I didn't post a lot,” Ford said. “I was careful about what I would comment on and what I would like. It's not worth it. You can’t hide anything. It’s a very fast way to get involved in a bad situation.”

Buy Photo

Aubrey Griffin looks at her phone while spinning a basketball before practice at Ossining High School Nov. 26, 2018.(Photo: Peter Carr/The Journal News)

Ossining girls basketball players sign off Twitter before the start of each season, continuing a trend started five years ago.

Senior Kailah Harris has become a vocal leader, enlightening teammates on the way things need to be done to remain a national power and enforcing the unwritten rule that they can “like” tweets, but cannot tweet anything themselves.

“She’s pretty much policing them,” Pride coach Dan Ricci said.

The use of Instagram and Snapchat is not regulated.

“It was always, ‘No Twitter,’ because we started it when it was just Twitter,” Ricci said. “Kids are kids. They’re gonna do stupid things. You don’t have to tell the whole world that you did it.”